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Mavs Lose. The headline from the Oklahoman: “How on Earth Did Thunder Pull off Game 4 Win vs Mavericks?” Joe Mussatto wrote of the 100-96 Thunder win: “It looked as if the Mavericks had snatched the Thunder’s soul. Game over, series all but over. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had the magic elixir. He revived the Thunder with one mid-range jumper after another. He ventured into the teeth of the Mavericks’ defense and kicked out to teammates who had missed 3-pointers all night until they didn’t.” The Mavs would have won if they’d made free throws. They went 12 of 23, while the Thunder shot 23 of 24. This one had me swearing at my TV.

Stars Win. From the Denver Post: “For about 16 minutes Monday night, the shorthanded Colorado Avalanche, buoyed by a sensational start from goalie Alexandar Georgiev and a full-throated Ball Arena crowd, looked capable of pulling off the improbable. Alas, reality set in soon after that.” The Stars won 5-1, and they could probably shoot free throws better than the frickin Mavericks.

SEC Sues North Texas Man. The feds say Robert Tye Cournoyer spent $755,000 from his hemp business, Green Equity, on a lavish lifestyle and gambling. I wonder if he took the Mavs last night and is as pissed as I am.

DMN Argues to Keep Police Chief. Houston and San Antonio are both eyeing Dallas’ top cop. Says the newspaper’s editorial board: “We hope Dallas can keep Eddie García in town. He’s been a ray of hope and an example of excellence.” I hereby call on García to arrest several Mavs for their criminally boneheaded play.

The Southwestern Medical District has succeeded—if your metric is world-renowned healthcare and research—despite how inhospitable the neighborhood can feel to actual people. The home of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Parkland, and Children’s Health is also Dallas’ largest heat island, where miles of concrete soak up the sun. Its wide streets encourage speeding and can make it perilous for pedestrians, a troubling reality considering physicians, nurses, and students split their time between the district’s sprawling campuses. This pocket off of Interstate 35 was formerly an industrial area, and it still feels like it, despite its hospitals treating 3.3 million patients and employing more than 42,000 workers.  

For the last seven years, the Texas Trees Foundation has been imagining a new reality for the city’s critical economic and healthcare hub. The Medical District overhaul has turned the humble nonprofit into a project manager of an ambitious bit of urban design, daring to reengineer a neighborhood of more than 1,000 acres where patients can find solace in nature while doctors don’t have to dodge Chargers.

Tonight Texas Trees will announce that the project has reached 30 percent design status, a critical milestone that allows the city to begin planning engineering and for the federally mandated environmental clearance to begin. Too, the feds can now consider the project “shovel ready,” which increases the likelihood of the project getting more federal funding.

It is a practical extension of the organization’s research around curbing urban heat islands while adding to the city’s tree canopy. But the work in the Medical District has a more holistic goal, too. Modern healthcare architecture has responded to a bevy of studies that show patient outcomes improve when design considers their experience. This has led to more spacious rooms, windows, improved lighting, and other ways to make patients more comfortable that had rarely been considered in hospitals. All three of the largest entities in the district have employed tenets of “social design” in their new buildings. But the conditions outside reflect this neighborhood’s history as an industrial center, when trucks rumbled along Motor Avenue (now Medical District Drive).

Huge Story About Toll Roads. The Morning News just dropped a package of stories that took a year to research and assemble. The umbrella headline for the kit and caboodle is “Toll Trap.” It would be unfair of me to summarize the entire thing because I haven’t yet read it all, but let me summarize the thing for you: we’ve got a lot of toll roads. For rich people, a $20 toll is no big deal, but for poor people, that’s a lot of money. As a result, some people would rather not pay tolls. Oh, and most publicly available toll calculators can’t be trusted.

$150k Offered in Mail Carrier Robbery. The US Postal Inspection Service is offering a big reward for information on a robbery of a carrier in Addison. They are searching for two male suspects who are possibly in their teens.

Another Night of Sports Conflict. Dallas sports fans get screwed again tonight as the Stars and Mavs both play at 8:30. If you can, squeeze in a nap today, and get that two-screen setup squared away.

Dallas Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert will have one more change to make on her new organizational chart. Assistant City Manager Robert Perez is leaving for Topeka, Kansas.

Perez has been chosen as the lone finalist for Topeka’s open city manager’s job, according to a well-placed source at Topeka City Hall with knowledge of the hiring process who did not have permission to speak on the record. Perez will replace former City Manager Stephen Wade, who was fired over the summer after only 10 months on the job. The city later alleged that he had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.

Topeka confirmed Perez’s hire around noon Friday in a press release. The City Council is expected to formally approve Perez’s contract in its May 14 meeting. Perez will be offered a one-year contract with a base salary of $255,000. His start date is being finalized, the city said, but it’s anticipated to be between late June and early July.

Mavs, Stars Even Their Series. Critical games in Oklahoma City and Dallas, with the Mavs sailing past the Thunder behind a Luka Doncic bounce-back game and the Stars putting up five goals. StrongSide will have more shortly. The Oklahoman spent its lead arguing that maybe Paycom Center shouldn’t chant “Lu-ka Sucks” next time.

Sergeant Fired for Faking Overtime. Sgt. Katherine Silva lost her job after Police Chief Eddie Garcia ruled that she had falsified her time cards and forged documents. She also engaged in “adverse conduct” when she was arrested for theft between $2,500 to $30,000 as well as tampering with a government record. Silva had been with the department since 2004. She can appeal the decision.

Mother’s Day Rain? There’s a 40 percent chance on Sunday, but the weekend should be in the mid-70s. That might be the last time we say that until fall. Rain and storm chances begin Saturday night and continue into Sunday morning, but the forecast doesn’t expect it to be severe. Bring an umbrella for your walk into brunch and you’ll be just fine.

Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia is suddenly a wanted man in two of the state’s other large cities, and our City Hall was caught looking. Houston and Austin are both without police chiefs; Houston’s resigned amid a rather alarming department scandal and Austin’s reportedly got fed up that the city couldn’t agree to a contract with the police department and retired after 25 years.

Complicating matters is that T.C. Broadnax has taken the city manager job in the state’s capitol, and, if you’ll recall, Garcia told reporters that he would “go through a wall for that man” once his boss’ messy Dallas exit became public knowledge.

And so it wasn’t totally a surprise that interim City Manager Kim Tolbert sent out a statement on Wednesday night to reporters. Her phrasing, however, warrants a raised eyebrow. Without naming them, she told our neighbors to “turn around and go back home.” (She also misspelled his name as “Gracia” once. Maybe she just had thankfulness on her mind.)

So what’s going on here? The crux of the issue, as the Dallas Morning News reported this morning, is that the Dallas city charter precludes the City Council from signing a contract with the police chief. He is an at-will employee, meaning the city manager could part ways with him at any time just as he could part ways with the city. I got on the phone this morning with sources around City Hall and tried to get a sense of what’s happening behind the scenes. Here’s what I can tell you, although I promised not to name names so folks could speak freely.

Now that we know the Cotton Bowl will be home to a new USL Super League team, here are some names we’d like to float:

Cottontails
Bruhs
Carnies
North Texans
Republican Mayors
Diamonds
Pegasi
Tammy Palominos
Very Fast Rocketships
Woofuses
Highways
Sue Ellens
Super Junior Leaguers
Stories

Update (10:53): At an event held at Klyde Warren Park, it was just announced that our team will be called Dallas Trinity FC, which I think is pretty solid. The logo is a stylized Pegasus. I’m onboard. And it turns out the club has been tweeting for months.

Local USL Super League Team Will Call Cotton Bowl Home. As we suspected, the new professional women’s soccer team will play in Fair Park. That much was confirmed yesterday when the Dallas City Council approved the deal. This morning around 10:30, Mayor Eric Johnson, league leadership, and USL Super League Dallas president Charlie Neil will announce more details, including the name of the Dallas team.

‘Turn Around and Go Back Home.’ After reports surfaced that Austin and Houston have expressed interest in hiring Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia for their open positions, interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert issued a statement praising Garcia’s work. She said that she and the City Council would be“working tirelessly” to find a way to keep Garcia in Dallas. “To the cities shopping in Dallas for a new chief, I have one message for you: ‘turn around and go back home,’” she concluded.

Dallas ISD High School Responds to Allegations. Last month, a Jewish student at Hillcrest High School filed a federal complaint alleging antisemitic bullying. This week, Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said that the district had partnered with the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, and Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum to provide training for staff in January, and will hold a student session as well. Elizalde said that the district has not yet received the federal complaint, but will cooperate when it does.

Hawk Terrorizes Neighborhood. People in one Keller neighborhood are dodging a “pretty aggressive” red-shouldered hawk with new chicks. One resident said the attack left her bleeding, and “felt like I got hit by a baseball bat.”

Weather Is Going To Be Weathery Today. The National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office says that another round of potentially severe scattered storms will fire up around North Texas this afternoon. The primary threats will be “very large hail” and wind gusts. No word on how big “very large” is, so just go ahead and expect something between a CD and a Dodge Challenger.

Kimberly Bizor Tolbert hasn’t waited to make changes at City Hall since becoming Dallas’ interim city manager on May 2. The new boss has shaken up the organizational chart and outlined her goals for the first 100 days.

In an email to the Dallas City Council yesterday, Tolbert announced that interim Dallas Water Utilities director Sarah Standifer would change her title to permanent director. The move may be seen by many City Hall watchers as controversial, particularly those who count themselves among our city’s environmental hawks. Standifer notably was atop the department that oversaw managing the Trinity River and the watershed when environmental snafus seemed common, like a borrow pit and a drained wetland pond that attracted the attention of the state in the forest near where the Trinity Forest Golf Club was being built.

Standifer joined the city in 2002 and was appointed interim director of the city’s water utility in June 2023, when her predecessor, Terry Lowery, retired. In her email, Tolbert cited Standifer’s expertise in water and wastewater management, as well as her affiliations with the Trinity Regional Flood Board, National Waterways Conference, and Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. 

In the same email, Tolbert also announced that Emily Liu has been hired as Director of Planning and Urban Design. Liu comes from Louisville, Kentucky, where she held a similar role. Tolbert said that Liu had been with Louisville for more than a decade, with much of that time spent leading the planning department. She has also worked in Illinois and Ohio and, in 2022, became the first woman in Kentucky to be inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She’ll report to work in Dallas on May 20.

“Emily has broad expertise across various aspects of urban planning and design, such as long-range planning, zoning, housing, transportation, urban design, and historic preservation,” Tolbert wrote. “She was pivotal in leading Louisville’s acclaimed Zoning Reform initiative, which has been recognized as a model for other cities.”

Two days ago—is it really only Wednesday?—I mentioned in my Leading Off post that former Cowboys wide receiver and mink coat enthusiast Michael Irvin was out at the NFL Network, his longtime post-playing career home. I added that we could probably find a desk for Irvin at D HQ.

I wasn’t joking then, and I’m not joking now. Since I can’t prove that the Playmaker is not a regular FrontBurner reader, I am going to address him directly from here on out. So, here goes.

Michael, this is a formal offer: come work with us.

What would you do? Short answer: whatever you want. (Within reason! We have lawyers on retainer but not enough to fully defend a “White House”-level scandal.) Long answer: whaaaaaateverrrrr yoooooouuuu waaaaaant.

Sorry. Off the top of my head, I think you would be a natural at heading up our weekly Monday Morning Huddles. No offense at all to Cory, who works upstairs and is a real champ at being the emcee of that particular shindig at the moment, a post he has held for some time. But, I mean, even if you have Harrison Barnes playing small forward, you don’t say no if Kevin Durant wants the spot. You know? Cory is a natural with dad jokes. But he cannot compete when it comes to wearing a tie with a knot the size of the Incredible Hulk’s fist.

If you want to write, we have essentially an infinite amount of room at our sports site, StrongSide, and you obviously have the requisite ability to fire off A Take, not to mention the kind of on-field (or court) experience that currently is lacking from our roster of writers. Or maybe you’d prefer to take on a new challenge. I’m sure your sartorial expertise could find a fairly natural fit at D Weddings, since we tend to see things from a bride-heavy POV. Or SideDish. Everyone likes to eat.

OK, now, as far as salary goes, I’m not saying we won’t pay you, but we certainly won’t pay you at the level you are used to, not as a pro athlete or even a broadcaster. But you can expect Tiff’s Treats cookies on the reg (they just show up, and I’m almost never clear why), and some restaurant or bar brings us lunch or afternoon snacks and/or drinks generally a few times a month, or else there are sandwiches or whatever left over from meetings. Speaking of leftovers, occasionally we have an event in the office and for a week or two afterward, there are spare beers in the fridge. So: desk beers.

Also, we are about to set up a cornhole game in the hall.

Stars, Mavs Both Lose Game 1. Different sports, different story, same result. The Stars blew a 3-0 lead and lost by a goal in overtime while the Dallas Mavericks looked tired and wounded while getting run off the court in the fourth quarter by the young Oklahoma City Thunder. Stay tuned to StrongSide; analysis is coming.

Rashee Rice Can’t Just Stay Home. The Kansas City Chiefs receiver, who is already charged with eight felonies related to a hit-and-run racing incident, is now under investigation for an assault at a downtown nightclub. Rice, an SMU graduate, is accused of hitting a photographer at 609 N. Harwood Street, which houses Lit Kitchen and Lounge and the speakeasy venue Feu. Police are interviewing witnesses about the incident.

Dallas Considers Rebates for Switching to Electric Lawn Equipment. The city may stand up a $750,000 program that reimburses single-family homeowners for switching from gas to electric lawn equipment. The city’s environmental higher ups expect about 3,500 families to benefit, which could include $50 for blowers and $100 for push mowers. The effort is a push to reduce emissions, and about half of the city’s 200,000 single-family homeowners still have gas equipment. (As a longtime member of the Ryobi Gang, I’d like some free money for being an early adopter.)

Cold Front! Today will be Houston, all muggy and warm, but a springtime cold front is on the way. Severe weather is a possibility, but the highest chances for problems are southeast of the metro area. Highs will be in the low 90s today before falling to the high 70s and low 80s through Mother’s Day weekend.